Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, carefully, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.

People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.

Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own things.

If you do a job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep your thoughts ... then your life will be happy.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been

Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

Remember that our efforts are subject to circumstances; you weren’t aiming to do the impossible. Aiming to do what, then? To try. And you succeeded. What you set out to do is accomplished.

Tell yourself: This thought is unnecessary. This one is destructive to the people around you. This wouldn’t be what you really think (to say what you don’t think—the definition of absurdity).

Text taken with some modifications from Gregory Hays' translation of Meditations.